The organization released a three-minute teaser last year. For those unfamiliar with the ACE STudy, this 14-minute puts a little more meat on the bones.

And if you want to know what your ACE score is — as well as how you’re doing on building resilience into your life — go to the survey: Got Your ACE Score? The ACE survey has 10 questions, and the resilience survey has 14.

So, if this incomprehensible act of violence was not classic terrorism, what else could it be? How could young men whom many people described as “lovely” and “talented” intentionally inflict such unrelenting pain and death?

…..to 2010. In just 15 short seconds, you can watch the obesity epidemic balloon across the U.S. The CDC defines obesity as having a body mass index that’s 30 or higher.

Reporter James Hamblin also posted the 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest obesity rates, and the 11 with the highest. The pegs at either end are Boulder, CO, at 12.5 percent, and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX at 38.5%.

Obesity is linked to childhood adversity. One of the CDC’s ACE Study publications found a link physical, sexual and verbal child abuse and obesity in at least 8 percent of the adult obese population. If there are 70 million obese and morbidly obese Americans, as the CDC says, that means that several million obese and morbidly obese people are likely to have suffered physical, sexual and/or verbal abuse during their childhoods. (It should be noted that this particular publication looked at only three of the 10 types of adverse childhood experiences.)

A number of other researchers are looking into the link between obesity and childhood adversity. Here

Like this:

I am a survivor of sexual and physical abuse. The experience changed me. It shapes and informs who I am – how I interact with others and the world around me. Yes, I have grown stronger as a result of these experiences; they are the wellspring of my passion and strength. Scars do that, they remind us of the past and how far we have come. Yes, great healing occurs but, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, the thin line of the break is always evident.

A very wise woman who walked with me through the early days of my healing journey once said when I asked her if the pain would always be so wrenching,

“The times between these moments will be longer. The pain itself will seldom be so strong. The time you are bent over in fear will not last so long. But you will always be a woman who has experienced violence. You may go to a party, someone tells a joke, everyone laughs, and you leave immediately to go home, to bed…not for long but the memory will come up again. The body knows. It is an archive of your history. It cannot be erased but it can be the basis of your body wisdom.”

So when we speak of the neuroplasticity of the brain, do not assume that every trace of the past is vanished. It just does not loom so large; it does not drive our every action, thought or feeling.

I don’t think we forget. We grow strong in the broken (read: wounded) places. And that is not a bad thing. It is a remarkable thing.

Rene Andersen sent this in a message on a list-serv; she said it would be OK to post here. Rene (pronounced “ree-nee”) has been active in leading recovery projects, especially developing peer-to-peer communities, for decades. She says her work “is grounded in the community, centered on the resiliency of the individual, and borne out of personal experience with recovery from abuse and addiction.” I’m doing a story about the trauma-informed care movement, and have interviewed her.

So says a study published in Pediatrics this week. The researchers reviewed 55 studies — 34 looked at parent behavior training (PBT), 15 at the used of prescription drugs, specifically methylphenidate, and six looked at a combination of parent training and school or day-care interventions.

So, according to the article, Dr. Alice Charach, of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and her colleagues asked this question: “Among children younger than 6 years with ADHD or disruptive behavior disorder, what are the effectiveness and adverse-event outcomes after treatment?”